My son and I had a lot of fun meeting people on opening day at Nationals Park. Even without Ryan Zimmerman’s fairytale-like heroics, it would have been a remarkable night to remember.

It was also a night for spotting local celebrities and a variety of oddities you don’t usually find at a ball game.

For example, it’s not every day you head to the concession stands at a major league ball park and pass by a man with a high-definition broadcast digital camera on a heavy-duty tripod taking photographs of a chili dog. Yet there he was. Obviously one of the big stories for locals was the presence of Ben’s Chili Bowl on the concourse behind the 3rd base line.

On Tony Kornheiser’s local radio show
this morning, Mr. Tony fixated for some timeon the site of Don Sutton wearing a tuxedo. Sutton came down from the broadcast booth to act as “master of ceremonies” for the player introductions. I have nothing but respect for Sutton, the hall-of-fame Dodger pitcher and current Nationals broadcaster; but I have to agree with Mr. Tony. Sutton looked like a waiter from Morton’s in that getup.

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I arrived at Nationals Park via Metro. When I emerged from the Navy Yard Metro escalator the first thing I saw was a large headed, six foot papier mache President Bush standing there wearing prison clothes. At that point I realized that I had not thought about protestors at the game … and why not? It is Washington after all.

I sat 5 seats away from one of the GEICO Cavemen, who ended up running with the Presidents in the RIGGED-AGAINST-TEDDY “race.” The Caveman was unaware that I had a gorilla suit in a bag with me. When he came back in the 7th inning, he saw the gorilla and waved me over to pose for photos with him. He really wanted to get us both on the giant HD scoreboard. He left and a cameraman showed up later, immortalizing that gorilla, on the largest screen in MLB.